"With this volume, we celebrate a quarter century of the Yearbook and its 25th consecutive volume. Over the years the Yearbook has chronicled the domestic and international activities of nonruling communist parties, national liberation movements, and ruling parties that regard Moscow or Beijing as their guiding lights. This past year we have continued to trace the momentous changes and subsequent metamorphoses of various communist parties into quasi-democratic, self-proclaimed socialist movements or loose federations. Entrenched Marxist parties remain, such as the ruling regimes in North Korea, Cub, and Albania (although its hard-line façade has developed some cracks) and those that depend on violent guerrilla activities to bring about Marxist or Maoist dominance, such as the Shining Path in Peru and the Communist Party of the Philippines. In many countries, communist parties as such no longer exist; as nearly as we can determine from the scant information available, they are represented only in clandestine or exiled cells, such as those in Thailand, Malaysia, and Burma.
"This 1991 volume includes 125 country profiles, three essays on international communist organizations, and an essay on Soviet propaganda themes by a total of 81 authors, as well as several brief biographies following certain essays. A cumulative index of biographies follows the bibliography. Information has been collected throughout the year, primarily from published sources such as domestic and foreign newspapers, communist party publications, journals, and transcripts of broadcasts that are monitored and translated by the U.S. Foreign Broadcast Information Service. Dates without a year in the text refer to 1990, the period under review.
Copyright 1991.
